On Responding to the Question: "Why Have You Abandoned Poetry?"

I have received in the course of the last several months open e-mails inquiring why I had stopped posting on this blog and more importantly why I had stopped writing and being an active member of the on-line poetry scene. The truth is that I had not abandoned poetry. Rather, poetry had until very recently abandoned me. No longer did the music of poetry spill into my everyday life. I had become oblivious to its calling. Whereas, before, the urgency of ars poetica would boil and bubble into my very essence, it had now become a footnote to my existence. This did not seem or feel right. Then there was the need to mourn my recent losses. Perhaps the time has come for renewal.



The Something
Charles Simic

Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.

My mother and father smile at each other
Knowingly above the mantel.
The cat sleeps on, the dog
Growls in his sleep.
The stove is cold and so is the bed.

Now there are only these crutches
To contend with.
Go ahead and laugh, while I raise one
With difficulty,
Swaying on the front porch,
While pointing at something
In the gray distance.

You see nothing, eh?
Neither do I, Mr. Milkman.
I better hit you once or twice over the head
With this fine old prop,
So you don't go off muttering

I saw something!